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Apple CEO Cook to dine with Xi Jinping in China this week
Monday, March 25, 2024 3:50 pm
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CEOs of 100 or so multinational giants such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has plans to dine with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping this week, gathered for the two-day China Development Forum.

Chan Ka Sing for Reuters:

Apple CEO Tim Cook said last week that no supply chain is as critical to the $2.7 trillion company as China’s. Sure, the iPhone maker is shifting some of its manufacturing contracts elsewhere, but more than 75% of its 200 major suppliers still maintain production in the country.

Chinese leaders, meanwhile, seem keen to engage directly with the West’s business elite. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cook, HSBC’s Noel Quinn and others are due to dine with Xi Jinping this week, months after China’s leader broke bread with corporate titans on a visit to San Francisco.

More hazards are appearing on the dance floor, though. Washington has for several years been spearheading a campaign to exclude Chinese technology firms like Huawei and SMIC from global networks, and to prevent the country getting hold of the most advanced semiconductors. Beijing wants to delete U.S. products from its turf, too; the Financial Times reported on Sunday, for instance, that AMD and Intel microprocessors are now being phased out from government computers and servers.

The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favour of domestic options, according to the article.

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MacDailyNews Take: The tension in the Chinese tightrope Cook walks continually ratchets up.

https://macdailynews.com/2024/03/25/apple-ceo-cook-to-dine-with-xi-jinping-in-china-this-week/